If you’ve ever had a goal about relationships that gave you trouble in the past, you may simply need to adjust it to make it more realistic and achievable. So, you may have had a goal in the past such as ‘I’m going to do my best to keep my partner happy’. Haven’t we all said that at some stage before? – “I just want to make you happy” but it’s not a realistic goal. It may be better stated as something like this: ‘I’m going to find ways to do the things that help my partner to be happy and do the things I enjoy in my own life also’.
One of the challenges we have in relationships is that you go from being a separate entity into this kind of team spirit, into this pairing, where suddenly someone else becomes important and for a while that’s great and then a period of time into that you realise that you may be losing your uniqueness, your individuality because you’re now part of a twosome, instead of just being that one quirky onesome that you were before.
If you can get that balance of doing the things that help your partner to be happy as well as still enjoying your own individual unique activities that you like to do, then you should start to see more balance there. The phrasing that’s been adjusted there is saying that you help your partner to be happy, because in order to make someone else happy and to keep that partner happy, it’s actually a cause and effect violation because you can’t really create happiness in another person. That’s for them to give themselves permission to do for themselves. However, you can create an environment which may induce that happiness. So, there’s only certain things that you can do to help someone else be happy but ultimately, it’s their own decision.
If you ever had a goal about your finances that didn’t work out too well it may be the case you just need to restate it into a more ecological phrase. For example, if you had a goal such as: ‘I’m going to save money every month’. Perhaps it didn’t work out because it wasn’t realistic and didn’t fit in with other aspects of your life, so instead you could say something like: ‘I’m going to save enough money each month to help me achieve my goals whilst keeping enough by to continue enjoying my life’. Therefore, you’re not cutting yourself short by having this ‘save, save, save’ mentality which inevitably gets sabotaged because you feel like you’re going without. Whereas if you can be more realistic about the amount that you save, perhaps save a little less but still have enough to feel as if you can enjoy your life and have a life, then it’s much more realistic for you to remain motivated to save that money.
Perhaps you’ve had a goal in the past about doing some self-development and you never saw it through. So, let’s think now about the ways in which you may be able to adjust that. If you had a goal such as: ‘I’m going to learn a new skill that I’ve always wanted to develop’. Perhaps what you need to say instead is: ‘I’m going to do whatever it is that you want to do and I’m going to do it by this date and every day I’m going to do something to move me closer to this’ and that is the key part, is the taking action.
Set definite dates and times by which you are going to take the action to do these things that you’re promising yourself that you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe it’s going on an N.L.P. course, maybe it’s doing some hypnotherapy training or something else that you’ve always wanted to do. Set yourself a date by which you’re going to do it.
Goal setting is a key activity that is taught on our NLP Practitioner training which is taking place in Hertfordshire, North London this year. Make an enquiry now to find out more about how you can use these skills to improve your likelihood of success int he goals you set for yourself.
By Gemma Bailey
www.peoplebuilding.co.uk
